This is How You Remind Me

There once was a man named Clarence.

I actually know very little about him, other than what I gleaned in brief encounters, moments in time forever preserved in the fragile amber of my memory. He was the maitre'd of the restaurant in the Pearson Hotel, a one-time Chicago landmark that was long ago demolished in an act of economic greed, replaced by The Water Tower Place.

Clarence was probably the first Black man I ever met, and certainly the first Black man that I can remember clearly. In the days that I knew him, the Pearson was in decline, fading away as it lived on the echoes of past glory. The word threadbare comes to mind, yet that isn't really a truly accurate description of the place. Decrepit might be a better word, from the lush carpeting to the dark paneling of the walls to the crystal chandeliers, mute witnesses to a time that was rapidly fading away as another time replaced it. But a kind of quiet dignity oozed from every pore of that building, the same kind of quiet dignity with which Clarence carried himself.

My parents used to take my brother and I to the Pearson every Sunday for brunch, something they did even after we moved from our apartment at 222 E. Chestnut, a few blocks from the hotel, to a brownstone a block away from Grant Hospital in Lincoln Park. Some days it was a somewhat informal affair, but mostly it was a gathering of what I suppose could be called the "movers and shakers" in the city. But what I remember most of those brunches - other than a weird aversion to scambled eggs - was Clarence, dressed in his black tuxedo and white gloves. For whatever reason, perhaps because of that dignity and genuine warmth that the man exuded, I always greeted him with a big hug, a gesture he always willingly returned.

To say that I was a rambunctious child would be something of an understatement. The business of adults was excruciatingly boring, and despite my mother's best attempts, the concept of children should be seen and not heard never quite sank in. I remember one Sunday, when the brunch consisted of about twenty couples seated at a long table, that I mortified my parents by deciding to entertain myself with getting on the floor and crawling under the length of that table.

My father started to get under the table to retrieve me but Clarence, ever attendant to his guests' needs, beat him to the punch, so to speak. Tuxedo, gloves and all, he got down under that table and crawled after me, the two of us knocking knees with the best of them.

Mostly, though, when Clarence noticed the terminal ennui getting to me, he would go out of his way to find things to entertain me and give the adults a break. Sometimes he would take me back to the kitchen, where the chefs and waiters would watch me; other times, he would take me into the ballroom, and let me bang away at the keys of an old grand piano. And sometimes, he would sit down at another table with me, and just talk.

In the late 1960s, a time when racial tensions in this country were coming to an explosive head, he taught me more about race relations than anyone else ever did, merely by being who he was. A man, after all, is a man, and it is the content of his character that defines him, not the colour of his skin. Whether he knew it or not, that was the lesson he taught me every time I saw him, perhaps one of the most important lessons I ever learned.

I have no idea what ever became of Clarence. Time went on, and old traditions fell into disuse, left behind as memories of an almost mythical simpler time. But I still think of him from time to time, and I treasure his memory not just because it is a part of a lost childhood, but because I look back with adult eyes and see that lesson. The world would, I think, be a better place if we all had had a Clarence, and I can think of no better epitaph for any man than that.